


Dreaming the Light

by hesnotadream



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments (Movies), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, I guess?? not really sure tho, M/M, Meet-Cute, Original Characters - Freeform, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, alec is a swimmer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 00:46:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12923700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hesnotadream/pseuds/hesnotadream
Summary: "You know, don't you, that when a man buys clothes for his girlfriend, he does it because he wants to take them off personally,right?" He murmured, finally answering the question.Alec swallowed, suddenly hot because of the contact of that hand - to say the least, considering the fact that he was among dozens of sweaty bodies and one in particular happily smeared on him.Very happily, in fact."B-but ... I'm not your girlfriend," he tried to erect a - bland - defense of what seemed to be something inevitable."That's true," he whispered in reply, brushing their lips together "you're not a woman."





	1. Where everything started-but did it really have to?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If there are mistakes please let me know! Hope you enjoy the first chapter!

Alec never thought that he was gay.

Exactly like he never thought he would have to choose - or ever wonder what was the difference - between a python belt and a cream one with light brown flakes.

And, certainly, Alexander Lightwood wouldn’t have betted a dime that those two things would have happened in one day. Precisely in one exact moment in the afternoon in which he thought he could finally relax

Clearly some supernatural identity hated him.

 

°°°

«Oi, Alex, move your ass!» shouted his friends from inside the store, distracting him from the contemplation of the shop window.

Alexander was a simple boy, with sober and practical tastes and, most importantly, with a really limited wallet - heredity of a family that decided that he was supposed to make his own money. In his twenty-three years of life he had had a few opportunities to spend a big amount of money on small things, but he had never seen before a man summer scarf with a price tag that read “Sales: 30% discount on all exposed items, price $430.00 

Someone must have made a mistake. Maybe he could go into the shop just to warn them about the mistake and then he would run away before they asked him to pay for the ground he had trampled on with his flea market shoes.

He stared at his grey sneakers - originally white -  worn out on the tips and on the heels. And thank God you couldn’t see the soles.

“Hey, you sissy! Are you admiring the window?” other laughters reached him from inside the shop, forcing him to look straight ahead.

On the other side of the glass there were his teammates, which  urged him to reach them inside and empty his credit card. 

There were Jamie and Joackim, the twins with the dark hair that, together with the exuberant Dorian and the quiet Bach, formed the components of the relay team–  that at moment they were measuring jerseys and shirts for thousands of dollars.In a corner, half-hidden by a selce strategically positioned besides the changing rooms, Brook –  that contrary to his female name was the tallest and most muscular of the team – was looking doubtfully at a shining purple belt, alternating glances between it and a saleswoman intent on serving a young man with a sophisticated look and clearly dyed hair with glitter on them. And finally there was the madman who was screaming at him to get inside to sell his blood like them: Lionel.

“Oh, well.” he muttered resigned,  bowing his head, crossing the turning threshold and getting hit by the strong air conditioning. That scarf would have been completely useless in a similar situation, in spite of the shocking price.

He couldn’t exactly remember when and who had proposed to celebrate the eventual admission to the National selections in the most exclusive Atelier of Philadelphia, the O'Connell, but he was more than sure that he was going to make them regret it.

“Look who finally had the guts to come in!” raised his voice Dorian, joining Lionel when he saw Alec. “Shut up, fourth man, you are too loud.” mumbled Alexander putting his hands in the pockets of his worn out gray sweater, feeling completely out of place.

To reach them he had passed a couple of customers - clearly habitué - and had felt himself dying inside.

The first woman was tall, slender and with a fresh hairdresser's haircut, probably a thousand dollars cut and fold. She wore a pair of red-calf-length trousers and a thin white fluttering shirt, closed at the front with a silk bow. Decolleté in leather with a dizzying heel and a bag equipped with a scarf on one of the handles.

Beautiful, without a doubt, but not as much as the second customer, a man with clear and thin hands, who passed from one fabric to another, commenting in a subdued voice what the saleswoman presented to him.

He wore a pair of light jeans, a cream-colored tank top with pink glitter on them and a jacket with a white background and a pattern of braided ribbons. Around his neck, he wore the same light scarf he had seen in the shop window and a pair of brown suede boots.

He looked at him for a minute, watching as he passes his fingers, complete with shiny rings and antique pink nail polish, through his glittered hair but he decided to look away before he could see the man’s face. He wouldn’t have resisted all that perfection.

“So? What do you want to try?” laughed Lionel, while he looked at himself in the mirror, preventing everyone else from looking in the mirror.

Alec preferred to raise an eyebrow and say nothing. Better to focus on Brook, who was just coming out of the dressing room with dark ripped jeans.

“I like those.” Alexander said, but only to keep his mouth busy and avoid answering the question. 

He really didn’t want anything.

“I think they make your hips look really big” Bach - and his refined touch- emerged from the last dressing room, accompanied by a tattered black and white striped shirt with long sleeves.

“And you look like a convict.” answered Brook in a low voice, taking off his shirt to try the one he had chosen to pair with the jeans. Showing off the powerful muscles of his back that attracted the attention of both the woman from the thousand dollar cut nad the saleswoman –who had seemed completely uninterested in them before Brook had decided to show off.

The boy knew exactly the effect that his body had - both in the pool and among the women - and he enjoyed experimenting with it.

Alec saw him grin and wink in passing at the most beautiful of the two, before slipping into a tight-knit sweater that looked like the walls of their old Middle School. Between sewer and powder brown.

Jamie clearly saw the twin holding back a disgusted grimace and Bach eyed him from head to toe, ready to rage as usual.

“That colour sucks on you” he said, crossing his arms and smiling with superiority. Brook tightened his jaw harder than it was actually necessary, but he preferred to say nothing, going back into the dressing room to return to his usual clothes.

From his 6. Feet and 2 inches, of muscles and black skin, he knew he had no chance of winning against Bach. The boy, although barely reaching 5.5, possessed a speed in the movements and a devious vein that sent him to detention more times than he could even count while in high school. Brook would never forget the first time they had met, more than ten years before. 

Brook was a quiet boy, but he would never shy away from a good fight when necessary. That morning in particular, he had been struggling with two boys for a clash - apparently accidental - between his shoulder and the elbow of one of the two.

They were behind the school with the intention of settling the matter when a stranger had interfered.

At the time no one knew Bach - he had just transferred from Canada- so he had settled between Brook and the boys  - with that too short cut and that volume of literature - who had laughed at him and tried to move him away.

He had twisted the wrist of the first, fractured the nose at the second and laid Brook with a nice fist, even before they could touch him. Then he had fixed his shirt, picked up the book he had dropped and left.

Stuff like that had happened plantely during the course of their friendship and not once did Brook manage to even scratch Bach.

So no, he told himself, tightening the elastic of his pants before leaving the dressing room, there was no need to reply to a person so scary.

Meanwhile Alec was wandering around the shop, weighing with his gaze the clothes carefully folded on the shelves. Jerseys, shirts, sweatshirts and even hats, they seemed too elegant, too expensive and too much ... too much.

He carefully put back on the shelf a light yellow shirt - before he took it it seemed quiet affordable - and sighed. They had been in that shop for a long time, too long, and he had not tried anything yet, unlike his friends.

Everyone had chosen something, even those eternal undecided Jamie and Joakim had managed to find shirts of their taste - same models but opposite colors, like the good twins that they are, who just  love to confuse their friends.

Lionel and Dorian were competing for the same pair of pants, showing very little maturity considering the fact that not only they had different sizes, but that on the shelf there were other specimens of the same identical model.

“Com on Al, we don’t have all day, just try something on.” Dorian puffed behind his back, holding the pair of pants so much disputed, and the triumphant smile of someone who has managed to win the Championships.

“Yes, but what?” he mumbled back, inspecting the shelf of the jeans with feigned attention. There was nothing that he really wanted to try.

“Oh, come on!” Lionel grabbed his arm, the other hand occupied with a new pair of pants, dragging him with the complicity of the others in one of the dressing rooms and closing the curtain behind him with a dry gesture. Alec groaned again.

"Can I know what the hell you are doing? I'm not obliged to try on clothes if I do not find them to my taste, right? "He tried to reason with them while he was unable to leave because of the presence of Bach and the twins who were keeping the curtains of the dressing room closed

"Don’t be such a wimp”," Bach commented simply, without varying his tone of voice - constantly set on friendly politeness - but clearly showing his true intentions - ranging from insult to gratuitous malice, to the point of culminating in psychological bullying.

"I am not a wimp, I just find that all this is totally devoid of all logic" said Alexander, in the hope that they would stop behaving as if they were in a playground. Or not, it was better this way. In this way they would be chased out before they could make him crumble some of the garments for sale.

“Come on, I really don’t see the problem” Jamie looked bored while he dangled his legs from the stool on which he sat, next to the mirror, "you just have to try on some clothes, my God, we did not ask you to run naked in Market Street."

Alec shuddered at the idea and preferred to keep quiet. There was no need to give Dorian new ideas on how to exploit his fleeting youth. He already had enough of his own.

"Well then," Lionel came back carrying a pair of tight jeans and a red shirt from the boat neckline-or so he told him, throwing it in his face and threatening to get in and undress him personally if he didn’t cooperate.

Alec took that mass of clothes away from his face and prayed to see an angry shopgirl come up - and why not, even the owner - with the intention of kicking them out. He waited a full minute, and since no one came to his aid, he forced himself not to crease that expensive shirt even further - two hundred and thirty dollars, had he read well? - and began to slip off his sweatpants.

"What are you doing in there?" Lionel's irreverent voice forced him to hurry up and close the last two buttons of his trousers.

He moved a hesitant step toward the curtain and he felt them pulling to follow his movement: he had not worn something so tight for years. Not considering the swimsuit.

Adjusting his collar, he pushed aside the curtains, preparing to face his teammates' jokes.

Alec had always been good at betting - his cousin had always sympathetically told him that it was so because he was a disaster when it came to love and God had wanted to compensate for that lack in some way - but he was more than certain that he would have never been able to foresee such a situation

Immediately outside the dressing room there were the twins and Bach, who instead of laughing at him and his elegant clothes, seemed to stare at something on his right. He raised an eyebrow surprised that the twins did not seem inclined to the usual idiotic jokes and brought his attention to the remaining members of the group.

Lionel was not paying him the slightest attention, suddenly too busy measuring a shirt and making sweet eyes to a new client with long blond hair, who was also intent on staring , with what looked like covetousness, Brook's once again bare back, who was trying out a new shirt - with the help of a saleswoman.

Shaking his head he turned to Dorian, the last one remaining, discovering that he was the only one that was looking directly at him, with a concentrated expression.

"It’s not so bad," he said only after nodding a couple of times. Alec curled his lips, not sure if that was a compliment or not.

"Of course he's not too bad. Those trousers wrap him like a second skin," said a new voice, forcing him to look to his right and realize who Bach and the twins were looking at up to that moment.

At his side there was the glitter-haired man with the elegant movements he had seen while entering the store. The one he never wanted to see the face of because he thought he was too perfect. And he had seen right. At least on that.

The man had a regular, oval-shaped face, beautiful oriental gold-green eyes that were were squaring him up from head to toe, thin, light brown eyebrows, straight nose with a rounded tip, full lips, and a smooth, even skin.

Alec swallowed and tried not to look him straight in the eyes. He could not have said why, but they disturbed him.

Alexander watched him come closer and tried not to wince when he raised a hand and took the red jersey fabric between two fingers, a breath from his neck. He ran them slowly to the seam on his chest and smiled.

"This is not your colour though. If you allow me now I'll take care of you ».

 


	2. Where you are faced with topics you never would have expected to come across

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter is short, and I know I just posted the firt one, but oh well! Again, if there are grammatical/spelling mistakes, please let me know! Hope you enjoy!

“Mister Bane, what do you think of this one?”

The question of the woman next to him forced him to stop rubbing his hands on the soft fabric of the shirt he was holding in his hands to bring his attention to the other items on display. Three more shelves were waiting for his eyes, but he could not manage to focus his attention there, in his hands the same shirt - which he had no intention of wearing - and all of his senses on alert.

Touch, committed to following the weaves of the fabric.

Taste, inhibited by the cinnamon candy that had been offered to him a few minutes before and that would have prevented him from tasting any other flavor for at least another three hours.

Sight, busy apparently staring at the void - but actually focused on a tiny crack that adorned the bottom of the shelf.

Smell, impregnated with a sudden, intense smell of chlorine, which made him feel strange, because the last time he had entered a swimming pool, it had been during his brother’s race, Raphael, during his second year in elementary school - currently, his little brother was living his fifteenth year of life.

And finally the hearing, extremely strained to listen to a series of conversations - in some cases, apparently - meaningless, coming from a small group that had entered the shop just over half an hour earlier.

There was the vaguely shrill voice that kept repeating to someone to come in. The profound one that occasionally commented on the exposed items, which in turn was commented on by a more cold and peaceful one. Then there were two almost identical voices, chasing each other and overpowering one another, with the deepest tone, but almost as animated as the first one.

And finally there was the last voice he had heard. He had arrived several minutes after the others, and, at first, it had been so low and mumbling that he had not taken it into account, in his analysis of the noisy group that had arrived in the store - clearly above their standards.

So he had ignored it, at least until he heard him get higher to deny something strongly.

"You can forget it! I am not  wearing something that I could crease only by looking at it!"

It was a tall, firm and clearly masculine voice, but he possessed a kind stamp that he had previously only associated with his sister, Catarina.

Perhaps that was why he was initially interested in him.

Then, at the laughter of one of the other voices, he had turned to finally see that heterogeneous group - which was starting to get annoying.

It was not difficult to associate the voices to the people who were stationed in front of the dressing rooms - apparently with the sole purpose of making a mess in a respectable point of sale like that.

The two almost identical voices belonged - without a doubt - to the twins who were fighting for the same hat, right out of a drawn curtain. The cold voice must have been that of the silent man leaning against the wall next to him, and the deep voice of the dark-skinned boy a little farther away, in the shirts department.

Finally, the excited voices could only belong to the last two, those who were squinting at each other with resentment - mixed with an amusement that seemed to be their habit - between them a pair of jeans.

It didn’t take Magnus too long to realize that the voice that most interested him was hidden from view by the only curtain pulled into the dressing room area, to finally try something. Distractedly he wondered what he could have chosen, wondering immediately afterwards why would he care about such a thing.

"So?" He heard one of the former contenders raise his voice and swirl one of the most expensive sweaters in the spring-summer collection, without the slightest respect, "What are you doing in there? Do you want a hand?"

A growl reached them from behind the curtain and Magnus got an idea of the situation. For some reason, he smiled and nodded at Silvye, the clerk, approaching the big rough guy. With the excuse of wanting to get a shirt, he studied the situation closely.

Ignoring the strange desire to assign a face - and maybe a name - to the voice that had struck him so much before, because the store was starting to get too loud for his tastes.

His sudden closeness did not go unnoticed because he clearly saw the twins look at him suspiciously and the guy with the apathetic face scrutinizing him from head to toe with arrogance. Even Silvye herself was watching him out of the corner of her eye, though busy trying to entertain one of the boys with a sweatshirt of a certain beauty - according to Magnus.

He was just about to ask one of the boys - the dark-skinned one, who seemed the most reliable - to leave and allow all the other customers to take advantage of the services offered by the boutique, when the curtain was pulled to show the boy who had just changed clothes.

The boy had beautiful curly black hair, the eyes, half-hidden by long eyelashes and with an angry expression, shone with a deep blue. The decisive line of the neck disappeared too quickly in the neckline of the red shirt - a color that did not suit him - and continued along the arms, getting lost in the nervous flicker of the muscles.

Magnus exhaled slowly, running his eyes over his soft lips and along his legs tightly bound by the jeans that stretched at every step. With big effort he tried to suppress the urge to take the boy, turn him around, and see the effect of that fabric on his ass.

The slight smile he had used to convince the group to leave widened slightly, while he approached the young man with a sure stride. And he put a hand on his chest.

"This is not your colour though. If you allow me I'll take care of you now.”

  
  
  


°°°

With fingers trembling with exertion - not to break a delicate and precious fabric - Alec closed the last button of the silk shirt, hiding it inside an eyelet decorated with a lace of a darker shade. He took a deep breath and pulled the curtain aside, showing himself.

Jamie and Joakim seemed to have vanished into thin air - or they had run in some other shop, as far as he knew - as well as Lionel, who seemed to have disappeared, probably along with the blonde woman with whom he had seen him before.

Brook and Bach watched him carefully as Dorian whistled in appreciation, turning to a fourth person, sitting on the pouffe next door. "No doubt about it. Now he looks like a boy. "

"Thank you very much," Alec said, more bitter than he had wanted. What did he look like before? A beggar?

"Undoubtedly," exclaimed that cursed voice, followed by the rustling of the shirt that its owner had worn "at least we took off the air of the country mouse".

"Said the city mouse ," he once again found himself responding to jab aimed at him, crossing his arms and immediately letting them fall down his hips, the sudden thought that he could have creased the fabric if he didn’t let go of that habitual gesture.

Magnus sat comfortably, his legs elegantly crossed and a ringed hand to his face.

"Come on, Alexander, don’t  tell me you're disappointed with the clothes I've chosen for you?"

Since he had told Magnus his name - an indefinite handful of minutes before, or maybe hours? - that man had done nothing but repeat it and put it in every sentence. He savored it and turned it between his lips and his tongue and then exhaled it in a languid sigh. Making him shiver every time.

He did not know how to act.

He had no idea what Magnus wanted from him.

He was not even sure he wanted to know.

And meanwhile he kept on trying clothes and clothes chosen by the man.

"You do not have good taste, economic availability and class. A catastrophic trinomial to which I intend to try and put a stop to" Magnus had firmly stated, while Alec was staring at those golden irises to which he didn’t understand why he couldn’t just say no to. Or to mind his own business.

"I certainly did not ask you to," he mumbled in response, careful not to be heard. The risk that this extravagant ponce decided to force him to pay every one of the clothes he had tried on still felt pressing in his mind.

"Your inability to juggle in a fashion store has forced me to give you a hand," the man snapped back, adjusting the perfect bend of a cuff.

"Nobody asked," Alec repeated, mumbling back from inside the dressing room, undressing and starting to put his pants back on.

However, he had - evidently - underestimated the intentions of that nosy stranger because, while he was busy lacing the elastic of his pants, the curtain was pulled back and a new shower of clothes fell on his head. With his hair all messed up he freed his face from a light suede jacket and aimed his angry gaze on the molester.

Magnus was staring at him with a satisfied smile.

"Nobody told you you could change, you know that, do you not?"

"Fuck you," he hissed at him, "you're nobody to tell me what I should or should not do!"

"Perhaps," he replied, holding out his hand, his fingers tense and dark in contrast to his pale skin "but I'm also the only one who knows what's best for you."

"And this" he said trying to ignore the damn hand next to his chest - too close, damn it - and taking in his arms two pairs of jeans, a shirt of broderie anglaise, a thin jerseys and the famous jacket, placing them in front of him like a shield "should be what I need? "

"Maybe," he told him enigmatically, "but if you don’t try them first, we'll never know."

"Who says I'll do it?"

Alec could not define why he had not succumbed to the instinct that shouted at him  to take that refined ponce by his iridescent hair and throw him out of there, to be able to dress in peace and return home with the wallet intact - though with the pride a bit 'too bruised for his tastes.

He could not even justify the sudden heat that had been unleashed on his chest, when the cold hand of the other man leaned against him, pushing him slowly back, entering the dressing room with him.

Magnus raised Alec head to look him straight in the eyes and the fingers of his hand opened on his still-uncovered chest. He smelled like cinnamon - was the only coherent thought that Alec managed to formulate while having him so close.

"Would you prefer for me to dress you?" he asked Alec mischievously while moving away slightly "Or to undress you, if you prefer."

Alexander blushed to the tip of his hair and pushed him out of the dressing room, between the puzzled looks of the more and the too much knowingly amused laugh of Bach.


	3. Beyond the mockery the damage - just like what he wanted to cause him!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No malec in this chapter, hope you like it anyway! There's gonna be malec in the next one tho!!

“You should have followed Magnus’ advice”

“Oh I see, no we are calling him by his first name, that scumbag!”

Alec was unsure whether to turn around and go back home or take Bach - with whom he was unfortunately talking - and drag him to the first place they could find to get drunk and forget the traumatic afternoon of the day before.

Twenty-one hours, sixteen minutes, and an unspecified number of seconds had passed since the first and last meeting - he hoped for both his physical and mental well being - with that extravagant and authoritarian character - he refused to even think of his name - and he still had not managed to get over the profound irritation that the man had caused him. 

Irritation, discontent, embarrassment, bitterness and a lot, a lot of embarrassment.

But he did not want to think about it.

He did not want to and absolutely did not have to.

Full stop.

"And you know, his name? Magnus? Who the hell are the parents who decided to give such a name to a poor child? Of course he grew up so badly! "He muttered again - showing how firm the decision to never think of him again was.

"It's a very respectable name," Bach commented, - ready as usual to say the wrong thing at the wrong time " it makes me think of ancient Rome "

"I don't give a damn what it remainds you of! He shouldn’t have done what he did "

Bach just shrugged and continued walking on the way to the Club where Lionel decided they would spend that memorable Saturday night. What was to be celebrated Alec did not know, but of course that was nothing but an irrelevant detail.

Bach had picked up Alec at a friend's house and was really disappointed when he saw that Alec wasn’t wearing the clothes he’d bought the day before.

Precisely he had put himself - because Bach had no intention of using the word “worn”, considering the rags Alec had managed to find who knows where - in some wide trousers, gray tennis shoes and a blue sweater full of holes that came from another era.

"You profiteer bastard" was mumbling the boy, oblivious to Bach's disapproving look - who was wondering why Alec wanted to pass unnoticed and look insignificant. Then he smiled. Although Alec had done nothing but say that he didn’t want to have anything to do with Magnus, he hadn’t stopped talking about him for even a second. Or thinking about him, considering the fact that he was still screaming about him.

"Oi, Bach!"

Bach was distracted from his thoughts at the sound of Dorian's voice, which was huddling at the entrance of “Pandemonium”, watched over with suspicion by the bouncer. Bach raised a hand to make him realize he had noticed - and to prevent the gorilla from beating him in the street - and, grabbing Alec by a sleeve, he dragged him inside.

There were very few people in the club, Alec notice confused, and the few people present were all dressed in black  with the emblem of the place, a white snake intertwined on a purple background. Then Dorian pushed them toward a spiral staircase that seemed to lead to the lower floor.

What greeted them was the frantic sound of an electric guitar solo  accompanied by dozens of enthusiastic voices and bodies that moved to the rhythm of the music.

"A disco-pub?" Was saying Bach, wrinkling his nose.

"Yeah, you have something against it?" Dorian said, leading them to a small table where Lionel and Jamie had already collapsed, surrounded by empty glasses and a half-empty bottle of what looked like champagne. Brook, not far away, chatted with a long-legged brunette.

"Hi," Jamie mumbled as he saw them coming, shaking his wrist in what should have been a greeting.

"Are you drunk?" Alec scolded him.   
"No, no," he chuckled in reply, trying to get up and falling on his forehead, bursting out laughing like never before.   
"How long have you been in this condition?" Bach asked, pointing at him with a finger and moving Dorian's foot under the table.

"Dunno" Dorian shrugged, grabbing another glass from one of the trays that gravitated around the tables "he was already like this when I arrived".

"Brook" he tried to attract the attention of the boy, distracting him from the conversation with the brunette.

"Yes?" He asked, annoyed at being dragged away.

"Jamie," Bach repeated, "is drunk."

“So?”

"Why is he drunk?" He asked patiently.

"I have no idea," Brook snorted impatiently. "I only know that he was with Joakim and that it has something to with a blonde."

"See you do know something" He snapped, freeing his arm "And tell me, where is Joakim?"

"Oh, that's easy," Brook told him as he  went back to the girl, pointing to the center of the dance floor. "Get in there and find him."

And, as his friend walked away with his most recent conquest, Bach remained dumbfounded, staring at the mass of bodies that formed a natural wall between him and - so it seemed - the only person responsible for Jamie's unusual drunkenness.

"Does no one care about me?" pouted Lionel, trying to keep his eyes open, showing the same empty expression and the same motor difficulty as his drinking partner.

"Of course not," said Dorian, amused, "because you get drunk every time we go out, it's normal."

Alec laughed briefly, who had remained on the sidelines for the duration of the conversation - that was as usual for them as it was unusual for the group of girls at the next table, who was still watching them.

Alec had seen him, Joakim, that it. It only happened for a second, when the techno music had given way to country - a request of someone evidently - and, while some country singer’s warm voice spread in the room, a lot of kids had moved to the center, leaving a glimpse of the slim figure of the boy.

He was clinging to a tall boy with long dark hair. They were dancing attached to one another, even if disturbed by a busty blonde who seemed intent on hitting on  Joakim.

Evidently the girl Jamie had set eyes on.

A pity that, between the two, she had chosen the homosexual twin.

"Why are you laughing?" Bach sat down, deciding that, after all, it was not his business if Jamie was unable to hit decently on with anyone.

"Nothing, I was just thinking," 

"About what? The fact that your clothes are totally unsuitable for this situation? "

Alec bit his lip, unsure whether to be offended or to burst out laughing. A reaction that hardly any other person would be able to arouse in him. There was nothing to say, Bach was a particular individual.

"I'm comfortable," he shrugged, taking a sip of his beer - he had stolen it from Lionel, deciding that the boy had already had enough of it.

"Oh, I don’t doubt it," said the other, looking at him reproachfully, "but you'd be comfortable even in jeans and a shirt. If nothing else, you wouldn’t seem to have escaped from a mental health prison. "

"Awesome. Now we went from a country boy to an insane boy, "he muttered as the comparison made him make forbidden connections. Fucking Magnus! It was all his fault.

"Do not blame Magnus," Bach said reading his mind, "he has nothing to do with this."

"I was NOT thinking about him," he lied annoyed, drinking his beer.

Bach gave him a look that clearly told him no, he did not believe him at all, but he didn’t comment on it.

"Anyway, you should have worn what you got with his help."

"What you forced me to buy, you mean," answered Alec,, "and anyway no, I have no intention of wearing them. I'll never dress like a dick. "

"In this way you will never find a girl."

"Then I don’t want one!" He replied sharply. "In any case, if a girl really liked me, she’d always like me. Actually, she would probably fall in love with my true self and not with ... »he tried to find a pertinent adjective, but in the end he limited himself to pointing to the dance floor, where dozens of shiny bodies danced in a pile of sweat and hormones «that!»   
"Look, _that_ ," he said, imitating Alec's tone, "is the best thing this place has to offer"

"What a shitty place then," he said annoyed, turning away and looking around.

“Hello".

The boy sighed.

"Hey, I'm talking to you," the voice from before - to which he had not given the slightest weight - returned more authoritarian, followed by a tap on his forearm. Alec turned around.

The girl had long dark hair, gathered in a soft braid. She was wearing a miniskirt and high heels and was unequivocally talking to him.

“Yes? "He asked, stupidly in his opinion. A strange euphoria made its way through the demolition of just before. Girls approached him even in his everyday clothes, to Bach's face.   
"I was watching you before" with a distracted gesture she pointed to the group of giggling girls from before "I'm Candy. I study at UPenn"she laughed briefly," but today I'm here just to have some fun. "

«Alexander» he introduced himself «I am a professional swimmer».

"Really?" She breathed, her hand still well anchored to the firm muscles of his arm - "So did you lose a race today?"

Confused - and totally unaware of the mental gymnastics that the brunette was doing - he frowned.

"Why would you think that I lost? I did not compete today, "he asked, trying to bring a glimmer of light into the darkness.

"So you lost some bets?" She insisted.

"Honestly, I do not know what you're talking about," he told her plainly, tired of not understanding what was happening.

"No, come on, seriously ... why else would you have dressed like that?" She sighed cheerfully, looking for a moment at the small group from which she had broken off to reach him.

"Look, I'm not making fun of you," Alec's eyes narrowed, the last shocks of initial enthusiasm vanishing completely.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I thought it was a joke," the girl giggled - an extremely annoying laugh, Alec decided. "I thought you were dressed like that for a bet."

Alexander tried to ignore the mishandled laughter that came from behind him. He would have killed Lionel and Dorian, not to mention Bach. 

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I always dress like that," he said tightly.

The girl, so bold and flirty until a moment before, laid her lips in a disappointed grimace, scanning him from head to toe and giving him one last skeptical look, before turning her back to him and returning to his giggling friends.

For some reason, Alec felt inexplicably hurt.

If nothing else, Bach had the decency not to utter a word.

He just stopped the first passing waiter and ordered another round of Tequila.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized that you might get confused with my 6 original characters! I hope you don't hate them too much, and that they don't throw you off too much, if you have questions ask, and if there are mistakes let me know!


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